Wittichen Abbey

Wittichen Monastery is a former Poor Clares monastery in Wittichen, located in a narrow side valley of the Kleine Kinzig near Schenkenzell in the upper Kinzig Valley in the Black Forest.

The monastery was founded by the blessed Luitgard of Wittichen in 1324. According to tradition, God is said to have told Luitgard, who came from the Schenkenzell district of Kaltbrunn-Vortal, at the site of the monastery: "Here you shall build me a house!" So she set out to find fellow sisters and founded her monastery with 33 sisters in the solitude of Wittichen.

The monastery found support from the Dukes of Teck and the Counts of Geroldseck, as well as from Queen Agnes of Hungary. Through their mediation, the hermitage was recognized as a monastery by Pope John XXII. On Geroldseck property below Wittichenstein Castle and under the patronage of the Counts, a community of women developed after difficult beginnings (fire at the monastery in 1327, consecration of the monastery church in 1330) with extensive monastic possessions in Wittichen and Kaltbrunn, as well as on the Upper Rhine and Neckar (stewardships for property administration, among others, in Gengenbach, Horb, Lahr, Rottweil, Strasbourg, Villingen).

Temporarily dissolved in 1540 as a result of the Reformation, the convent of women consolidated again – albeit with restricted possibilities – and suffered heavy losses during and after the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) (1640, 1663). The monastery was secularized in 1803.

The ideal-religious center of the nun community, which adopted the Rule of St. Clare in 1376, was the tomb of the blessed Luitgard. Pilgrimages were undertaken to her grave, especially after the opening of the grave in 1629 – the brain of the deceased was found completely intact. Wittichen Monastery had some significance since its foundation within the dominion and as a house monastery of the Counts of Geroldseck.

During the secularization, the monastery came into the possession of the Princely House of Fürstenberg. Part of the buildings was demolished in the 1850s due to excessive costs. The church, the nave, and the monastery stable are preserved, as is the cemetery.